VANCOUVER – An open letter to the premier from a school district employee in the Kootenays is gaining attention online.

Psychologist Todd Kettner worked 70 hours of unpaid overtime, along with other educators, after a boating accident on Slocan Lake left four young people dead.

When he opened his paycheck, close to $600 had been deducted for job action he didn’t take.

Kettner was so angry he wrote a Facebook post addressing the premier on this issue.

It’s been shared more than 4,000 times since he put it up on Wednesday.

“To throw all that time and energy into doing what you love doing, which is supporting children, supporting youth, and then to have that public lack of gratitude,” says Kettner.

“I guess I conveyed what some other people are feeling too because people have told me it matches their experience.”

In part, the letter reads:

Today ended for me after my own children had already eaten supper when I finally arrived home at 7:00 p.m. After working more than 70 hours of unpaid overtime in the past 16 days, I opened my paycheck to see that – even prior to tomorrow’s first scheduled strike day in our district – you had deducted $596.82 from my family’s income for what you describe on my paystub as “job action.”